I attended the tsunami-themed Pacem in Maribus Conference in Thailand where I was slated to be one of the keynote speakers. Thailand is especially interested in tsunamis after its Andaman Coast was ravaged by a particularly devastating one in 2004, killing more than 8,000 people on the southern coast. Pacem in Maribus is Latin for Peace in the Ocean. The organization is an international forum on sustainable governance of the oceans with experts from countries all around the world.
During my speech, I discussed Tsunami Disaster Risk Reduction lessons learned from the engineering field as well as government policy and…
I met Jolanta and Artessa for a breakfast meeting at a hotel lounge in Manila’s high-rise business district. They were the World Bank officials from Washington D.C.. Artessa is a Filipino structural engineer who speaks with keen articulation and sense of strategic direction. I knew Jolanta from the Istanbul seismic risk-reduction project. It was considered to be one of the most successful programs organized by the World Bank and we had a small, but key, role in the project building technical capacity within the municipal government of Istanbul. Jolanta was promoted to be in charge of Southeast Asia. Subsequently, we…
This post is part of a series called The 2013 L'Aquila Earthquake
L’AQUILA, Italy–The fire chief was waiting for us at the security gate to the hilltop old town center. He assigned a fireman to drive and escort us through this abandoned city. I found the Italian people to be extremely friendly and helpful even under such extreme conditions. The three of us got into the fireman’s four wheel drive truck and up the hill we went.
I asked him to stop the truck when I saw the destroyed building. It was a nightmare. This was a total collapse of…
This post is part of a series called Miyamoto in Myanmar
YANGON, Myanmar–We flew from Bangkok to Yangon, Myanmar on Monday morning. Once there we were greeted by Twe Twe and Nang. They took us to lunch before visiting the Myanmar Engineering Society. We stopped at a local place, they let me sample the goat brains to see if I would like it as my main course. It seemed every meal we had during this trip was accompanied with mango, which was great for an avid fruit eater like myself. The mango I had today was sweet and had hints…
This post is part of a series called The 2013 L'Aquila Earthquake
TIVOLI, Italy–I arrive at Tivoli on April 13th after a 15 hour KLM flight from Tokyo, where I was on vacation with my family and doing research at the Tokyo Institute of Technology. I met up with an Italian engineer, Ilbe Salvaterra, from our partner company, Global Risk Consultants at the Rome airport at 9:30 pm. It is always nice to have a good local engineer on our reconnaissance team to investigate a disaster area. Ilbe rented a car and we drove to the town of Tivoli. This…
This post is part of a series called Miyamoto in Haiti
Waking up in post-earthquake Haiti has challenges and opportunities. We’re here to help rebuild in a safe and sustainable manner. Today there are two sides of that great task that faces us, the Haitian people, the United Nations, and the international community, as a whole.
This morning, two government representatives came by our Petionville house. One is a senior official and the other is an adviser to President Rene Preval. Our discussion turns to a topic of great importance: schoolchildren.
I sit with my colleagues Lon and Guilaine as…
